Diablo 2 Patch v1.10

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Mysterious World-event
•Players of Hell difficulty Realm games are hereby warned that a new, challenging world-event has been added to Diablo II version 1.10. Players of Hardcore characters should be even more wary when encountering superunique monsters during an active world event. Be prepared to execute a hasty Save and Exit, if your situation seems too dangerous.

Fundamental architecture changes/improvements
•The skill and monster systems are now completely data-driven. Skill balancing is simpler and quicker. Monster control/populating/creation is simpler. Although done for our needs, mod-makers should like these changes, too. A major result is that nearly any skill can be used by any character class.
•A skill now may have synergy Bonuses (similar to masteries) applied by putting points into other skills.
•The player stats and inventory system has been completely redone to run more efficiently, improving server performance and stability.
•The collision detection system has been sped up significantly. Again, improving server performance

Specific changes/improvements
•Increased difficulty for high-level players to reduce future exploitation of the game system.
•Made monsters tougher
•Beefed up monster difficulty in Act V, Nightmare, and Hell difficulties. This was accomplished by improving monster stats (hp, ac, etc.) and by boosting their AI/behavior in NM and Hell difficulties (that is, by making decisions more often and by simply moving faster). In Nightmare and Hell difficulties monster damages have generally been increased -- dramatically in some cases.
•Reduced the effectiveness of Experience runs, power-leveling, and leeching.
•Added randomized (especially ranged-attack) monsters to Nightmare and Hell Act V - e.g., Burning Dead, Imps, etc.
•Increased the Experience attached to most Act V monsters in Normal, Nightmare, & Hell difficulties.
•Reduced the HP of (Act V) Barbarian soldiers in Nightmare and Hell difficulties.
•Increased the rate of occurrence of Unique monsters in Hell difficulty.
•Reduced the party member Experience sharing to 0 beyond a maximum distance of about 2 screens from the monster death. This prevents low-level characters from joining a party and then staying completely out of harm's way while still getting Experience.
•Increased the Experience penalty for Clvl 70+ as follows: Clvl 1 - 69: 100% Experience Clvl 70 - 99: 85% - 0.8% Experience (approximately exponential decaying)
•Encouraged players to play in more of the Diablo II areas/locations/levels.
•Reduced drops from the most-run SuperUnique monsters, ThreshSocket and Pindleskin.
•Cut Experience and reduced drops in the Cow level.
•Randomized the monster populations more thoroughly throughout Act V in Nightmare and Hell difficulties, including the addition of 'guest monsters' from other Acts.
•Increased the number of Unique monsters in each area and difficulty.

Improved various Items
•Improved the attributes for newly-dropped Rare Armor, Helms, and most Weapons.
•Added over 100 new Unique Items, of which 29 can be found only in Ladder games.

Closed some PvP loopholes/exploits
•Terminated the casting of 'absentee' skills such as the Sorceress' Meteor, Firewall, Blaze, Hydra; the Assassin's Sentries; the Druid's Volcano; etc. when the player enters town. This prevents declaring Hostility and doing immediate damage to the unsuspecting.
•Prevented 3rd-party hacks from treating background objects as a Waypoint.
•Enforced a 10-second delay between declaring Hostility and using a Waypoint or Town Portal to leave town.
•Ears and other items dropped on the ground by players (even in town) are deleted more frequently, and even when on the same screen as players. Magic, Rare, Set, and Unique items persist longer.
•The attribute "Hit Slows Target" has been limited to no more than 50% slowing when used in PvP.
•Fixed the bug that prevented a hostile player from targeting a Whirlwinding Barbarian equipped with a 2-handed sword.
•Throwing an Oil Potion no longer crashes an opponent

New Battle.net features. Please see www.battle.net for more information.
•Introduced a new Lobby. Players now start in the lobby where they may decide to enter battle.net chat as before or to simply create/join a game without entering chat.
•Added the ability to recover a forgotten/stolen account password via email registration.
•Added a new command '/mail account_name' which sends a message directly to the account's registered email address.
•An 'expiration date' is now shown with Realm Characters on the selection screen.
•Introduced a new Ladder System for those who prefer to play free from any characters who may have participated in past item duping or hacking. To use this new feature, a player places a check in the Ladder box upon character creation -- in the same way that Expansion and Hardcore selection is done. Periodically, the Ladder may be reset, adding the old Ladder characters to the regular population -- who, of course, cannot play games with the new season's Ladder characters. Thus, every season each new Ladder character truly starts from scratch, as no 'twinking' is possible from older characters.
•Once a player defeats Diablo, all Diablo II Battle.net accounts accessed from that computer may create Hardcore characters.

Battle.net bugs
•Prevented a crash when waiting in the Blizzard Tech Support channel on Battle.net.
•Realm games created without a Password no longer allow players who specify a Password to join.
•When a character dies during an 'Alt-F4' disconnection from B.net in Hardcore, the character icon now properly appears in both chat and the Character Selection Screen.
•Corrected typos in the Options help.
•Prevented players from changing their chat text color and indentation to masquerade as official Blizzard accounts.
•Warcraft III players no longer appear as cloaked figures in Diablo II chat rooms.
•Battle.net stability has been improved when a Diablo II character that had been designated as the operator of a private channel resigns.
•Players may no longer immediately re-join a chat Channel from which they have been banned.
•Barbarians dual-wielding with a Javelin now show the Javelin in battle.net chat, too.
•Removed Age from the Player Profile.

Major Bugs
•Fixed the 'Druid Drop' bug related to equipping items which would cause players to be dropped from a game when activating Werewolf or Werebear skills above level 33.
•Super Unique, Unique, and Champion monsters can no longer be created as nearly invincible, that is, with < 0 hit points.
•Barbarians and Assassins who are dual-wielding potions are no longer prevented from entering a game.
•A Zod Rune applied to an Ethereal item no longer reduces its durability to 0.
•Characters with extremely fast attack speeds no longer erroneously miss their targets.
•Summoned creatures (aka 'pets') now properly inherit the player's level to determine their monster level.
•A summoned Grizzly now properly pursues and attacks its enemies more effectively.
•Fury and Phoenix Strike can no longer target the casting player's hireling or pet.
•Valkyries are no longer treated as monsters and erroneously assigned additional Life in Nightmare and Hell difficulties.
•A Valkyrie affected by a party member's Oak Sage can no longer be killed with 1 hit.
•Assassins and Barbarians with Mastery points no longer have excessive Critical Strikes applied to their melee attacks.
•Oak Sage and Heart of Wolverine now function properly above skill level 20.
•Poison Creeper now properly receives the PvP damage penalty.
•Holy Freeze no longer slows the Lightning skill.
•The curse Attract can no longer be overridden by any other curse.
•Using Battle Command can no longer erroneously retain the skill bonus granted by an item after un-equipping the item.
•Active level 18+ Thorns no longer makes the player character invulnerable to monster melee attacks.
•Lightning and Chain Lightning are now properly affected by items with casting rate magic properties.
•Using Enchant on ranged weapons now boosts the damage a variable amount.
•Fireballs used against a Lightning Enchanted monster no longer make its Charged Bolts invisible.
•The 3rd charge of the Assassin's Skill - Blades of Ice, now freezes the target.
•Lower Resist now correctly updates the resistances displayed on the target's character screen.
•Crushing Blow now works at the percentage chance stated.
•Items can no longer be created with level requirements higher than 99.
•A throwing item with the magic property Replenishes Quantity now replenishes if depleted to 0 quantity.
•Newly-discovered Ethereal items with the magic property Increased Maximum Durability now may have the maximum durability.
•The Rune Word "Melody" now works properly for bows.
•Leaving the vicinity of a Super unique monster and returning after 20 seconds, now properly respawns the Super unique for treasure drops.
•The erroneous action of the Reduce AC modifier. which had shown in the item pop-up as x% Target AC has been corrected. It now no longer sets the target's AC equal to the percentage, but properly reduces the target's AC by the percentage. The display has been corrected to say "-x% Target AC." The modifier's effect is reduced by one half when player characters, SuperUniques, hirelings, and Act-end bosses are targeted.
•Fixed a bug in damage calculation for weapons which computed +min/+max damage prior to +damage%.
•If Holy Bolt is assigned to the right mouse-button and Charge or Smite to the left, left-clicking on a party member no longer sticks one in place.
•A player character standing on a player corpse is no longer immune to missiles.
•Auto-targeting skills when assigned to the left mouse-button no longer repeatedly cast, if one is holding the button down to move. Auto-targeting skills are those that nearby target if one is not selected, e.g., Fist of the Heavens.
•The Paladin's non-aura skills now attack appropriately, when one clicks on a foe without enough Mana to use the skill.
•A class of bugs that had reduced the effectiveness of alternating weapon attacks when equipped with two weapons has been fixed, including the various dual-claw Assassin attacks.
•Poison length calculations are now correct.
•Poison now works properly when applied to ranged attacks.
•Mindblast and Conversion now remove any auras from their targets upon casting and also when they wear off.
•Confuse now works properly, that is, without the occasional misfire.
•Holy Shield now boosts the defense of the player, not the shield.
•Blade Fury now uses the proper amount of Mana.
•Skeletons, Skeletal Mages, and Golems are now raised with appropriate (non-0) Attack Rating and Defense stats.
•Iron Golems are no longer summoned with excessive additional Life in Nightmare and Hell difficulties.
•Hirelings can no longer equip items without meeting the item requirements.
•Rogue hirelings can no longer shoot Lightning Bolts by equipping items that boost Bow and Crossbow skills.
•Isenhart's Case and Horns now work together correctly on Hirelings.
•Monster warping (aka teleporting) in some TCP/IP games has been reduced.
•Slowed or chilled monsters no longer 'desynch' (or 'lag') as easily.
•Corrupted Rogues no longer pause for long periods of time when pursuing a foe.
•When a Barbarian throws a weapon with his left hand (right inventory slot) while equipped with a melee weapon in his right hand (left inventory slot), the thrown weapon now does proper damage.NPCs no longer bestow quest rewards (e.g., socketing) upon unidentified items.
•An NPC no longer fails to give a quest reward item to a character with a full Inventory or Stash.
•The Heaven's Brethren set bonus of "+5 to Light Radius" now works.
•As shown on the Character screen, Assassins receive a damage bonus from boots.
•The Assassin's Claw Mastery bonuses to Damage and Attack Rating are no longer erroneously swapped.
•A behavior-changing curse (like Dim Vision) can no longer affect a monster permanently, when the player portals away.
•The Life of monsters affected by Regeneration or Poison now updates correctly.
•Enchant cast upon other player characters is now enhanced by the caster's Fire Mastery.
•Skills and magic effects that change one's maximum Life now change one's current Life by a corresponding percentage.
•The Attack Rating displayed for the Assassin kick skills is no longer higher than the actual Attack Rating.
•Macintosh-specific fixes
•Improved compatibility with dual-monitor Macintosh systems.
•Prevented a crash when using the scroll bars and highlighting games in Battle.net's Join menu.

Minor Bugs
•Summon Spirit Wolf no longer overstates the Damage.
•Spirit of Barbs, Heart of Wolverine, and Oak Sage no longer understate their radii of effect.
•When the Automap option "Center" is off, the Automap no longer centers upon opening the Skill Tree or Inventory.
•The extraneous text in the Change Realm dialog box has been removed.
•The health bar of a Flayer knocked from his Flayer Shaman now works.
•Fixed a general monster health bar overflow bug.
•A temporary loss of the Stamina Shrine effect no longer occurs.
•The Skill Tree levels are now displayed properly when a player equips both a non-melee item that boosts all character class skills along with a weapon that boosts an individual skill.
•Skills granted by items are now always displayed as such in the Skill Tree.
•The damage displayed on the character screen is now correct when a character with high strength has no weapon equipped.
•The damage displayed on the character screen is now correct for Freezing Arrow and Holy Shock.
•The hover text of the Amazon skill Multiple Shot now correctly displays that it does 3/4 weapon damage.
•When the Assassin has two Claws equipped and is using the Weapon Block skill, the Chance to Block percentage properly appears in the hover text of the Defense stat in the character screen.
•The Golden Bird quest status is shown correctly in the quest log, if one exits the game before getting the reward.
•The Redemption skill description now correctly states that it affects only the caster, not the party.
•The Redemption skill graphic effect can no longer appear erroneously when a player returns from town through a Town Portal.
•The Thunderstorm skill graphic effect now displays properly.
•The damage listed on the character screen for Holy Shock no longer appears blue.
•Hardcore Assassins and Druids no longer appear as cloaked figures in the multiplayer character selection screen of DII Classic.
•Message log scrolling is now more responsive.
•Players now see other players kicking barrels.
•Berserker Axe" is now spelled correctly.
•Io, Shael, and Jah Runes now have Korean, Japanese, and Chinese translations.
•Corrected localization (translation, text box sizes, etc.) for a number of issues in French, German, Chinese, Korean, and Spanish.

Enhancements and other changes
•Implemented a new system to detect and delete 'duped', 'hacked' and other erroneous items from the inventories of Realm Characters as they are loaded.
•Increased the damage of nearly all skills above skill level 20.
•Added synergy bonuses to many skills. The bonuses boost the effectiveness of the higher-level skills based upon the number of points allocated to the lower-level (synergizing) skills. Players are rewarded for using skill points earlier rather than hoarding them all for later 'cookie-cutter' distribution to high-level skills.
•Rebalanced the rate of Unique/Set/Rare/Magic items drop.
•Lower Resist and Conviction skills now work properly against immune monsters.
•Cold Mastery has been changed to a constant amount.
•Elemental Piercing versus immunities has been changed to a constant amount.
•Improved the existing 7 class-specific Sets by adding and/or boosting partial and complete Set bonuses. Also added a visual effect to wearers of these complete Sets.
•Limited the maximum experience gain from The Ancients quest in Act V to 1 character level.
•One can no longer enter Town Portals cast by other players in areas beyond the "blocking quests" without having completed those quests: e.g., Canyon of the Magi/Seven Tombs/Duriel's Lair (The Summoner), The Harem/Palace Basement/Arcane Sanctuary (The Tainted Sun), Durance of Hate (The Blackened Temple), The Worldstone Keep (The Ancients), The Secret Cow Level (Terror's End in DII classic or Eve of Destruction in DII: LoD). NOTE: A player who kills the High Council (but doesn't use Khalim's Will to smash the Compelling Orb), may take a Town Portal into the Durance of Hate.
•NPCs no longer accept lower difficulty quest items to complete quests in a higher difficulty.
•Atma now heals automatically.
•Quest items are automatically identified when they drop.
•Increased the challenge of Mephisto and the Ancients.
•Increased the damage and defense of Andariel, Mephisto, Diablo, and Baal.
•Gave Mephisto a more powerful Frost Nova, based on his own (not player's) stats.
•Added blocking and resistances to Duriel.
•Reduced the levels of all auras used by Unique monsters.
•Added more Unique monsters to the open areas of Acts IV and V.
•Life leeching is now determined by each monster type and reduced below 100% in Nightmare and Hell Difficulties.
•Added resistances and blocking to the Unravelers in Act II in Hell Difficulty.
•Increased monster hit-points in one player games and reduced the increase to monster hit-points for each additional player in multiplayer games.
•Boosted the effects of Health and Mana potions.
•Mana potions are now sold by some shopkeepers.
•The Antidote potion now gives +50 poison resistance and +10 max poison resist for 30 seconds.
•The Thawing potion now gives +50 cold resistance and +10 max cold resist for 30 seconds.
•The Stamina potion now gives super stamina recovery for 30 seconds.
•Newly-found (post-1.10) magic bows with the properties "Fires Magic Arrows" or "Fires Explosive Arrows" have these properties at appropriate skill levels rather than being fixed at level 1.
•Improved gambling by increasing the chances for Rare, Set, and Unique items.
•Improved monster drops by boosting the base item types and by increasing the chance for Rares.
•Increased the chances that dropped items have the magic properties of Enhanced damage, Life-stealing, Mana-stealing, and + to all Resistances. Increased hireling Life/attack rating/defense/level. Also removed the skill cap from Act III hirelings. (Hireling level at hiring is now different between DII classic and LoD.)
•Increased life regeneration for hirelings.
•Boosted the effect of Health potions upon hirelings.
•Lowered the cost of resurrection of hirelings.
•Increased the leash range of hirelings.
•Summonables except for Revived monsters and pets that don't attack or defend - e.g., Vines now get Defense and Attack Rating based on their level.
•Bone Walls are now friendly to the caster's party - that is, not attackable.
•Improved Blood Raven's behavior.
•Guest monsters (those from earlier Acts and lower difficulty levels) compute their Treasure Class (for item dropping) appropriately for their new, higher levels.
•Chilling Armor no longer responds to other Chilling Armor bolts.
•A player may have up to 16 corpses now. Only the first (oldest) corpse holding items is saved between games.
•In Nightmare and Hell difficulties recovering one's corpse now restores 75% of the Experience that had been lost at death. This applies to all of a player's corpses.
•Block lock' has been eliminated. When a player character has just blocked an attack, the player cannot block again for a short period of time, the length of which increases as Blocking speed increases.
•Reduced the 'lag' when Lister the Tormentor and his minions are summoned by Baal.
•The levels of The Forgotten Tower are now larger in Nightmare and Hell difficulties.
•Increased the likelihood of dropping Elite items.
•Only a very few Unique items and new 'uber' items are now over level 85. That is, the best items now drop more often.
•Jewels and other modifiers can now boost the elemental damage of a melee weapon if that trait is listed as part of the Jewel description.
•The Buriza's level (not its level requirement) was increased to 59.
•Items that grant skills bestow a lower skill level to those character classes who natively have the skill in their skill tree. Note that Charged items receive synergy and mastery bonuses, but don't receive bonuses by assigning extra points to the skill.
•Boosted the Cham Rune freeze effect on weapons from +1 to +3.
•The Eth Rune's effect is now "-25% to Target AC". Thus, 4 Eth Runes reduce the target AC to zero.
•The modifier "Ignores Target AC" no longer acts upon SuperUniques, hirelings, and Act-end bosses. Its lack of effect upon player characters and unique monsters remains unchanged.
•Changed the Horadric Cube recipe that had used 3 chipped gems to require 3 standard gems as follows: 3 standard gems + 1 socketed weapon = socketed, magic weapon.
•Changed the two Horadric Cube recipes for Rejuvenation Potions to require a chipped gem and a standard gem.
•One may sell items to an NPC without the confirmation dialog by ctrl-left-clicking on them.
•Increased the size of the message log from 32 to 128 lines.
•Reduced the density of the graphic special effect displaying curses.
•Added optimizations to light map computation and added various levels of light map fidelity which automatically adjust to keep the frame rate acceptable.
•Selecting "Show Party - No" in the Automap Options now shows one's pets.
•In the inventory an unidentified Unique item is now shown as its generic item type.
•Improved the accuracy of the Mana cost display.
•Added a graphic effect to the Whirlwind skill.
•Improved the second level charge-up graphic effect of the Assassin's Phoenix Strike.
•Added new color schemes for certain Rare, Set, and Unique items.
•Maces and Staves now display "+50% Damage to Undead", consistent with other weapon classes.
•he TCP/IP Join Game button remembers the last IP address entered.
•Chat commands (e.g. 'fps') are now preceded by a slash (e.g. '/fps').
•A new chat command '/nopickup' toggles on/off the ability to automatically pick up items lying on the ground. When off, one must hold down the Alt key to pick up items.
•Monsters (except for SuperUniques) in non-ladder Realm games are now at 75% HP (Hell), 85% AC (NM & Hell), and don't increase their AI speed for higher difficulties.